Enter to Win Your Spot in the Damn Fine Words Writing Course

It’s that time of year again:

This online writing course is changing the game for business owners around the world, because it teaches effective content-creation techniques that help cut down your writing time, make it twice as productive, boost your confidence, and target the right readers, with the right message.

As always, each time I prepare for a new session of Damn Fine Words, I also open up a writing contest that anyone can enter. You see, many people tell me that they’d love to register for the course, because if they could just get in…

They’d learn how to write more engaging website copy that draws in much-needed clients.

They’d create content that brings results, instead of struggling with what to write and putting their words out there.

They’d gain confidence and could feel excited about writing, maybe even for the first time in their lives, instead of agonizing over every word.

I support those goals wholeheartedly. And I want to help make that change happen.

The Damn Fine Words Writing Contest

This writing contest is a friendly competition where your sincerity, desire to learn, and motivation to succeed counts more than anything.

This contest isn’t about the quality of your writing so much as the quality of your determination … and what you would do, if you could join the course and improve your writing skills.

What You Can Win:

One person will win a full scholarship to the February 2015 session of Damn Fine Words (retail value $1,599). The runner-up will win a 50% scholarship applicable to their registration for the February session.

Both the winner and runner-up will become full-access students who will directly benefit from the course lessons, hands-on exercises, immediately applicable advice, and interactive members-only area.

Winners will also receive my personal support and feedback throughout the entire duration of the course.

How to Enter the Writing Contest:

You don’t have to be a writer-for-hire to enter. This contest is open to anyone – writer, freelancer, small business owner, entrepreneur – in any career field or type of industry at all.

All you have to do is write an article or a blog post about this:

Why writing is important to your business success.

You could write about how becoming a better, faster writer would literally change your life and your business. You could write about how not feeling confident about your writing has affected your business already. You could write about what it would mean to your business to have your writing obstacles swept away forever.

I want to see you write about why it’s important for you to be in the Damn Fine Words writing course, and how this could change your life.

The Rules

The rules for entry are very simple:

Your blog post or article should be at least 450 words. (This isn’t a brevity contest, after all.) Do keep it under 1,500 words, though.

Your blog post or article must be posted to a publicly-viewable location. No private entries will be accepted.

Come back here and leave me a comment that links to your post.

Pat yourself on the back.

That’s all.

No points are given for correct grammar or spelling. No points are given for fancy words or brilliant prose. In fact, there are no points given for the quality of writing at all.

I’m looking for two people whose businesses have a better chance at success because they committed themselves to improving their content-creation skills.

I’m looking for two people who are driven to succeed, who are ready to go the distance and who understand that this writing course could take their business to the next level.

I’m looking for two people who are dedicated to showing up every day and doing their very best – people who are ready, willing and able to dedicate themselves to their self-improvement.

The Damn Fine Words writing contest is now closed, as of January 23, 7am. Best of luck to those who entered!

I’ll select two winning posts and contact winners directly, so be sure to have a Contact page on your blog or website, or let me know your email address in some other way.

Ready? Get writing!

Post by James Chartrand

James Chartrand is an expert copywriter and the owner of Men with Pens and Damn Fine Words, the game-changing writing course for business owners. She loves the color blue, her kids, Nike sneakers and ice skating.

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Join the Discussion. Click Here to Leave a Comment.

I have just started designing my first ever blog – theblueskyblog.com – it’s all about achieving my goal of location independence and writing is the vehicle that I’ve committed to helping me achieve that. I have started work on a series of ebooks collectively called “the blue sky series” all about freelancing and location independence. I have posted my entry as a comments section of an article on entrepreneur.com, here’s the link – http://fyre.it/9QSsGw.4.

Knowing I need help to achieve my goal, the first step is to commit to writing and educating myself to get to the level where businesses require me to be. That’s how I found you and it would be a privilege to be chosen for this scholarship.

That’s definitely a creative way of finding a public location to post an entry, so kudos to that! Unfortunately, I wouldn’t be able to take a comment made to another article as an entry for the contest, because it doesn’t fit the requirements above.

This may just be the exact boost you need to get your website live! It doesn’t have to be perfect for everyone in the world; you can just make your blog post visible for the contest and then take it down afterwards, if you’d like.

Well I like this idea but I don’t know how do you choose your winners here because what I know is that I’m the first person who should get this as I’m bad in writing infect I suck. I do try to write good topics but hey I’m bad at it no one loves my blog all your help will bring change to my blogging. Thank you.

Hi James, Happy New Year! What a truly generous offer and inspiring competition. I am entering because I need all the help I can get! After much mid-lifing, towards the end of last year I launched a new consulting practice around the work that lights me up AND I started blogging. I love writing but I find it so challenging. I’ve been avoiding it for a decade. Thank you for your consideration. Here’s a link to one of my recent posts http://www.stephenscottjohnson.com/2014/12/27/peeling-back-the-onion/ xox

Hey Stephen, I just want to make sure that it’s clear you’d need to write a new post specifically related to the entry requirements and topic area. This seems to be an older post from December, so I wouldn’t be able to take it into consideration for the contest.

Thanks for asking. She is alright. Fortunately they were baby teeth, but it was quite an ordeal and had us at the ER for 6 hours! We are practicing new smiles and ways to laugh (as one of the two teeth is not quite smashed all the way out). It’s sitting horizontally in her mouth, (as in the bottom of her tooth is now the front) and may need to be pulled this coming week.

Good luck to everyone who takes part in the contest.
I joined the September 2014 DFW course.
James is right – The Damn Fine Words course will transform not only your writing and your business but also your life.

Hi James,
I only just discovered your websites and signed up for your newsletter last week! Right at the same time as I was signed up for a “bootcamp” class to learn html and coding. I’ve put my entry on my published project page for the bootcamp course, since I don’t have a blog or other public place to post this. I’m excited about the few html codes that I used to put this together. However, please be warned. This is not fancy, in the slightest! I haven’t learned that yet!
But, the words are there. My story is there. I tested the link so it should work. Thank you so much for this opportunity. Writing this piece was a lot of fun and very helpful for me.http://skillcrush.com/user_projects/ericasparhawk/
Best,
Erica

I hope you have had a good holiday season in the chilly northern winter. The sun is shining down here in Sydney, Australia. I’ve written another entry. Thanks again for running such a fantastic competition. All the best selecting your winner.

I am sharing this because it is funny example (in a sad sort of way) of mainstream medias approach to couples distress:

Thought you might find this entertaining,

Fast Magazine Interviewed me today on my thoughts regarding couples using video as a way to deal with relationship issues. It was a painful reminder I do not live in or on the same planet as a whole group of young, hip, and “fast” folks on the West Coast. There were (sadly) many moments like this:

Reporter- So don’t you think video could be a good way to preserve bad memories?
Me- What do you mean preserve bad memories? Are you serious?!?
Reporter- Yes
Me- What do you mean, could you give me an example?
Reporter- Well a person may have video of how their partner was awful to them and show it to their kids as a way of explaining the divorce.
Me- Oh my god – no – that would be a TERRIBLE idea!
Reporter- Why?
Me- There are whole books devoted to the subject of how and when and what you tell your children about divorce. That is a whole other article! (I pause)…. I get the feeling you had an idea about this article and I am not giving you the answers you want…, is that the case?

So that’s the kind of stuff that is being written – magic bullet, sensationalized, perhaps even (sadly) well-intentioned/misguided. I’m sure it’s true of lots of topics and lots of writing. Anyways, wanted to share 🙂

I’m looking forward to writing with both of you, and I’ve sent email confirming details.

To everyone else, you made the decision really tough for me and my panel of judges, so kudos to all of you. And there are so many benefits to just writing your entry and publishing it that I think you all deserve a big high five!

[…] First prize is a full scholarship to the February 2015 session of Damn Fine Words (retail value $1,599). The runner-up will win a 50% scholarship applicable to their registration for the February session. For more details, click here: Damn Fine Words Writing Contest. […]

[…] my job to make the businesses I work with sound damn good to their target audiences. Taking the Damn Fine Words class and building my abilities, confidence and efficiency will certainly help me be successful in […]

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The Damn Fine Words writing contest is open to anyone - writers-for-hire, freelancers, small business owners, the self-employed, and entrepreneurs, in any career field or type of industry.
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